Deluge
by absolutelycancerous
Summary: His master attempts to live to serve him.


Self-confidence, for Soul, comes in the form of one pigtailed, doe-eyed, fast-talking, Miss Maka Albarn.

He's not sure why, because slamming books into people's skulls (specifically: **his**) isn't really how you get someone to feel and come to terms with their own self worth, but somehow, with her absolutely-goddamn-ridiculous study habits and a yell of his name that could freeze beer, she manages. And it's a life-saver, to say the least.

Mostly because Soul doesn't ever remember being wanted at home, not as a kid, not as a son, not as _anybody_. He doesn't really remember being scolded for treating guests poorly, for stepping on their heels while showing them to the dining room, or giving snarky answers in response to inquiries it as clear no one really cared about. He doesn't remember "family time" aside from trailing after his big brother, hoping to pick up the talent his sibling seemed to radiate like the fucking _sun_, bright and clear and absolutely there, without a doubt. So painfully out of his own reach, Soul could kick himself for letting such greatness seem to slip right through his fingers; as if it were his own fault he was second-fiddle, so to speak.

Soul mainly remembers existing in that house, not much more, and not much less.

Existing, Soul now knows, is a whole different world from actually living somewhere.

When he partnered up with Maka, moreso, when he hurriedly moved in with Maka, it was much different from home. In the sense that, yeah, apartments are fucking _small_, how did it possibly seem so big before? But also in a sense Soul had never known, something that made him _want_ to sit around in the living room and in the open, made him _want_ to hang around in the kitchen with this girl he'd mainly agreed to partner up with because hey, you don't look a gift meister in the mouth, right? Something that didn't make the house seem always frigid cold, or made him want to hide away in his room until he was dragged out by the ankles to leave and try to act as an Evans.

It wasn't an apartment. It wasn't even a residence.

It's a _home_. With life, _actual_ life, that isn't always the best (like when they forget electricity bills and have to sit in city-qualified darkness and eat take-out by the light of flashlights and cell phones) but is always entertaining and something that, Soul now knows, he couldn't give up for anything. Not the dinner catastrophes that always seem to happen when it's his turn to cook ("Soul, I don't want Chinese, just _cook_ something!") a meal, not the wake-up calls that either leave him with blood spewing out of his nose as he brushes his teeth or nursing a new dent in his head with plenty of bitching, and certainly not the many times the bathroom door refuses to lock and having a visitor or several while doing anything from washing his face at the sink to scrubbing his hair in the shower.

Soul thinks the fact he's an actual _member_ of a household makes his own confidence boost itself up a little from "zero" on the scale. If not because his name is right there on the lease, making him half responsible—legally—for the place, than because Maka makes sure he keeps up with his share of work (no matter how much he actually despises cleaning the bathroom every other Saturday or vacuuming the living room once a week) around the place.

Plus, there's just Maka in general, who has the decency to poke into his room before she's fully making dinner, to ask what'd he prefer her to make out of what they've got. Who never changes the radio station while they're cleaning, at least, not without asking (and usually arguing with him) if she may, because his opinion matters, too! A baffling concept that, at first, makes Soul squint at her and pull his head out from the ammonia-reeking basin of the sink to give her a look of absolute confusion.

"Soul?"

"Sorry—what?"

"The radio station? Can I change it?"

"Oh," a sigh, though definitely not one of relief. "Do whatever."

(May the record show that she changed it to some god-awful _**folk music**_ station, and that was the end of Maka making any music-related choices in the Albarn-Eater household.)

It's a little bit of everything that fills Soul's hollow shell of a person, hollow innards that hold only personal values and pay homage to a house with a mother and father who didn't know how to love more than one child. It's Maka's partnership, her unwavering trust that, with the feeling of her hand in his, Soul doesn't ever forget or endanger. She noticed him, she chose him; she _saved_ him from returning home, a failure as a musician and a reject as a weapon. She, with the wavelength that leaves him humming tunes that don't belong to his own works, but to her _soul_, what it dictates to him in the times that they resonate, their beings twined so close together, there is no longer a separate Soul and Maka, but merely "us" and "we" and "one". She with the heart of gold, with knowledge of what real pain is, that which keeps her strong and grounded, sure of herself and independent.

She uses him to protect herself. If that isn't an honor, Soul isn't sure what exactly qualifies.

She yells when he's cocky, when he's reckless and stupid. She yells because she **cares**, because she is so loyal to him that if he were to go getting himself killed or putting himself out of commission, Maka honestly would not know how to continue with her career. He is an extension of her, the blade to keep herself away from all others, to prove her own worth and pride. She works to fill him with all that he lacks.

She is the water in his hollow river basin. That rushes to fill in the holes and gaps that need tending to and filling, that settles once its job is complete, always prepared to move if its container is to warp and change. There is nothing she can't fix, and if there is, she'll learn how. Her partner cannot be anything less than whole.

Whole.

Soul likes that word; uses it to describe how Soul Resonance feels, because there's not much else it can be compared to (unless "natural" is an acceptable answer.) It's only after standing with her, side-by-side, time and time again. In the times when she's spitting blood on the pavement and he's swearing like a sailor hauling up the anchor, to the times she's glowing with a smile that hits her eyes and he's nothing but silently ecstatic.

Maka pours Life into him, fills his glass with the finest wine. He drinks, it leaves him dizzy, but she tilts the glass to his lips, and licks away the excess that trickles down his chin, leaving sticky, honey-feeling trails on his neck where her tongue has already been.

His master attempts to live to serve him.

Soul will _always_ make sure there is enough for her to drink.


End file.
